A federal jury's mixed verdict in a high-profile lawsuit pitting two Silicon Valley giants in a software copyright battle that could have repercussions across the tech industry was panned by legal experts hoping for a more conclusive verdict.
"There's something in this verdict for everyone, but not enough to make anyone happy. The verdict is terribly inconclusive," said Brown Rudnick partner Edward Naughton after Monday's conclusion to the first phase of Oracle's far-reaching intellectual property suit against Google.
Jurors on Monday ruled that Google infringed upon the overall copyright structure of Oracle's Java software platform in the creation of the Android operating system used in smartphones and other mobile devices, but were unable to reach a decision on a key claim by Google regarding what the company called its fair use of 37 Oracle-owned Java APIs at issue in the trial.
It was also determined that Google could have reasonably believed that the Android development team's use of Java was proper at the time it was building out the OS in part by cloning Java APIs and libraries without an official license agreement with Sun Microsystems, the then-owner of Java, which was acquired by Oracle in January 2010.
"Oracle can emphasize that the jury found that Google copied the structure, sequence, and organization of 37 Java APIs, but Judge [William] Alsup still hasn't decided whether the structure, sequence, and organization of the APIs is copyrightable," Naughton told PCMag.
"Google can emphasize that the jury couldn't reach a verdict on the issue of fair use, and that the jury found that it did not infringe copyrights in the documentation or most of the code that it used."
Indeed, within minutes of the verdict being rendered, Google's attorneys were pressing for a mistrial based on the jury's inability to decide the fair use issue. Judge Alsup will listen to arguments for a mistrial from Google on Tuesday and Thursday and then proceed to determine what damages are awarded to Oracle, if any.
Oracle is asking for as much as $1 billion in damages but Judge Alsup on Monday appeared skeptical of Oracle's claim to a portion of any profits Google has generated with Android, noting that the copyright infringement pertains to "just nine lines of code" out of hundreds of thousands that make up the mobile operating system.
Following the copyright infringement phase of the case, jurors will be asked to determine the validity of Oracle's claims that Android also infringes upon its patents for Java.
Google is infringing on two key sets of Java patents relating to compiling and memory performance with Android, Oracle lead attorney Michael Jacobs told the jury later on Monday during his opening remarks for the second phase of the ongoing trial.
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